Blog

Preferred Software Industry Recruiters – exclusively

Top 6 – LinkedIn Profile Essentials for Software Sales Professionals

What does your LinkedIn profile say about you to Prospective Hiring Managers?

Your LinkedIn profile is an important exposure that needs to be well managed over the course of your career not just when looking for a new position.

As a software industry recruiting agency, we share candidate resumes with potential hiring manager each day and one of the first things they do is jump to LinkedIn to see what they can learn about a potential software sales candidate. What are they looking for? What will the LinkedIn profile reveal that a resume might not? Consider the following:

Sophisticated hiring managers will look at the Photo to determine if this person presents themselves in a polished and professional manner. Is their image consistent with our company culture? Be sure to add a photo in business attire. Avoid photos of children and pets. Save those for Facebook.

They will look for consistency in the data presented – does the employment history match what is on the resume? Do the dates align? If there are discrepancies that will be a red flag.

They look for who has Recommended you. If a former manager writes about you that is the best recommendation you can get. Get as many former managers to write a “Recommendation” as you possibly can.

The activities and interests you show speaks to your personality and character. Do you volunteer? What organizations do you belong to? Were you an Eagle Scout? Member of MENSA? Honor Society Member? Managers get a deeper insight into who you are.

Another consideration is the sheer number of contacts. If you have a large set of connections this tells the hiring manager you are using LinkedIn as a tool for “social selling” A top performing Enterprise Software Sales professional will use all the tools at their disposals and LinkedIn in the #1 Social Selling platform today. Use LinkedIn to research a prospect company, individuals in that company and develop your entry strategy to speak to them

Lastly, who do you know in common? If you have mutual connections one could expect the hiring manager to reach out to them to see what they can learn about you.

In closing, your LinkedIn profile plays an important part of a hiring manager’s consideration of you. If your profile does not yield information about you, they will feel you don’t place a premium on your profile and thus considered too “old school”. Enterprise software sales professionals today should leverage the power of their LinkedIn profile to set themselves apart from the competition.